Abstract
What is the Singapore model of governance when it comes to law? In this chapter, I focus on a persistent strand of Singapore governance practices and discourses on law: the state’s insistence that ‘the people’ imperil the state. Understanding ‘the people’ both as individuals and as collectives, I argue that the Singapore model is to contain and govern the scope and rights-bearing meanings of law, by subordinating law to techniques, ideologies, and practices of an alternative category and logic: security. Through Singapore-specific articulations, law becomes a cipher for security, and, as a national-legal project, security privileges state perspectives and policies. In the course of the national-legal project of security, ‘the people’—their narratives, beliefs, and identities—become subsumed to governance oriented to strengthening the state.
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Notes
- 1.
Perhaps the most thoughtful and thorough archive of material relating to Amos Yee consists of coverage of the issues, and attention to civil society organisations, offered by The Online Citizen: https://www.theonlinecitizen.com/?s=Amos+Yee
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In approaching law as governance, I build on ‘Law As …’. ‘Law As …’ is importantly distinct from the conventional sociolegal framework of ‘law and’ through which disparate disciplines are yoked together. Instead, ‘Law As …’ probes the insights facilitated by “deploy[ing] history as an interpretive practice—that is, as a theory, a methodology, and even a philosophy—by which to engage in research on law. Simultaneously it proposes history as a substantive arena in which other interpretive research practices—those of anthropology, literature, political economy, political science, political theory, rhetoric, and sociology—can engage with law” (Tomlins 2014, 1).
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See, for example, the preamble to Letters Patent Establishing the Court of Judicature at Prince of Wales Island, Singapore and Malacca in the East-Indies (1826), commonly known as the Second Charter of Justice, and Napier (1898).
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Singapore’s population has been predominantly Chinese since 1836 (45.6%) (PuruShotam 1998: 41, note 3). Today, Chinese consist of about 74% of the population, with a significant Malay minority (13%) and an Indian population of about 9.2%: Government of Singapore Census of Population 2010 Press Release online http://www.singstat.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/statistics/browse_by_theme/population/census2010/press31082010.pdf. (The next census will be conducted in 2020.)
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This discourse of equal citizenship through law has become accompanied by a denial of indigeneity for those bearing the race name ‘Malay’ (Rahim 2009: 22–25).
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Students at Singapore schools typically begin their day by reciting the national pledge, “We the citizens of Singapore, pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language or religion, to build a democratic society based on justice and equality, so as to achieve happiness, prosperity, and progress for our nation”: http://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_84_2004-12-13.html
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The Singapore state has been strident in defending its departures from Western liberal legality when it comes to detention without trial, corporal and capital punishment, defamation, the presumption of guilt, and offences against the judiciary. In contrast to these noisy departures from Western liberal rule of law, the nation’s discarding of colonial legality’s ‘custom’ has attracted little Western notice, hence my characterisation of a quiet departure.
- 11.
‘Founded’ by Raffles in 1819 as a trading post, in 1826 Singapore became part of (and later the capital of) the Straits Settlements, which consisted of three ports crucial to the control of the Straits of Malacca: Penang, Malacca, and Singapore (Turnbull 2009: xvii).
- 12.
Employment of Foreign Manpower (Work Passes) (Amendment) Regulations 2010, First Schedule, Part IV, regulation 8.
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Singapore Parliament Reports 22 March 1961 columns 1199–1202 (Chan Choy Siong).
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The interpretive space enabled by this provision has since been removed from theWomen’s Charter in a 2005 amendment presented as blandly technical in nature: Statutes (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 2) Act 2005 (No. 42 of 2005). Singapore Statutes Online.
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While population now stands at about 5.5 million, in 1980, the figure was 2.73: “Singapore’s Population Journey”, Straits Times, June 21, 2012 http://www.straitstimes.com/sites/straitstimes.com/files/ST_20121006_SAT2_3330225.pdf
- 17.
While land area now stands at 718.3 square kilometres (http://www.singstat.gov.sg/statistics/latest-data#14), in 1980, the land area was 617.8 square kilometres (de Konnick et al. 2008: 14). The Singapore state has expanded territory by reclaiming land from the sea.
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A useful summary of the controversy is offered by the Singapore Heritage Society, http://bukitbrown.com/main/?page_id=954
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Alternatively, given that early missionaries in other parts of the British empire “were quick to recognize that the space of death was a site of singular sensitivity” (Comaroff and Comaroff 2012: 81), it is possible that sensitivity as well as incompetence informed colonial practice in Singapore.
- 20.
In addition to Tan and Yeoh (2002), see also Environmental Public Health Act (Cap. 95) Rev. Ed. 2002 and Environmental Public Health (Cemeteries) Regulations. State concern about the shortage of land for burial was expressed as early as 1968: Singapore Parliament Reports, 16 Dec 1968, col. 423 (Chua Sian Chin). In presenting the 1968 Environmental Public Health Bill to Parliament, the Minister for Health spoke of the need to revise and renew colonial regulations based on Victorian Britain’s public health enactments: Singapore Parliament Reports, 16 Dec 1968, col. 399 (Chua Sian Chin).
- 21.
On ‘Asian Values’ discourse and its precursors in Singapore, see Rajah (2012: 104–110; 32–53).
- 22.
Ironically, in 1989, nine years after he had been released from detention, Kuo was awarded the prestigious Cultural Medallion even though his citizenship was yet to be restored. Kuo appears to have viewed the bureaucratic refusal to restore his citizenship as an administrative oversight: Lo (2004: 142–143).
- 23.
From 1972 to 1988, despite 210 individuals having been detained without trial, no habeas corpus proceedings were initiated, an absence that may be attributable to the detentions without trial of lawyers who acted as counsel for detainees in such proceedings: Rajah and Thiruvengadam (2013: 657).
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Vismann writes of the centrality of law as record with reference to democracy’s horror at being ‘off the record’ (2008: xii).
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See, for example, https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=598&q=Lee+Kuan+Yew&oq=Lee+Kuan+Yew&gs_l=img.3..0l10.1331.5856.0.6010.12.7.0.5.5.0.87.522.7.7.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.12.566.a4GntyGwvr8#tbm=isch&q=Lee+Kuan+Yew+death&imgrc=LEHVUp366AqN4M:&spf=393; and https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=598&q=Lee+Kuan+Yew&oq=Lee+Kuan+Yew&gs_l=img.3..0l10.1331.5856.0.6010.12.7.0.5.5.0.87.522.7.7.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.12.566.a4GntyGwvr8#tbm=isch&q=Lee+Kuan+Yew+death&imgrc=vWyUFo5DAuek3M:&spf=656
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- 34.
For any Singaporean, the length of Yee’s hair in this video is an early giveaway of his status as rebel and outsider. Most 17-year-old Singaporean males would not be permitted, by their schools, to wear their hair at that length. Additionally, once male Singapore nationals are of age to serve their compulsory military service, they receive two-by-four army haircuts, embodying their individual subordination to the disciplines and regimens of the institutions they are schooled in and socialised by. However, Yee chose not to continue with formal education after completing his General Certificate of Education (Ordinary) Level examinations, despite having done well enough in these exams to qualify for Junior College: http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/the-changing-faces-of-amos-yee
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- 36.
Yee was originally charged with three offences. The first, “deliberate intention of wounding the religious or racial feelings of any person”, responded to his Lee/Jesus analogy. The second, distributing obscene material (section 292 (1)(a) Penal Code), responded to a crude cartoon of a sex act that Yee had uploaded the day after he posted his video. In this cartoon, the faces of Lee and Thatcher were superimposed onto line drawings of a couple. The third, harassment, appears to have been an effort to respond to the public outrage at the disrespect shown to Lee and was framed as a violation of section 4 of the controversial 2014 Protection from Harassment Act. In the end, this last charge of harassment was dropped.
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https://sg.news.yahoo.com/amos-yee-released-teenage-blogger-071502585.html
His mother and his lawyer, on the third prison remand period and how he was strapped to the bed.
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Public Prosecutor v Amos Yee Pang Sang [2015] SGDC 215.
- 56.
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Public Prosecutor v Amos Yee Pang Sang [2015] SGDC 215; and http://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/sentence-backdated-amos-yee-released
- 58.
Lee invoked a form of resurrection when he said, at the 1988 National Day Rally, “Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me into my grave and I feel that something is going wrong, I will get up.” http://www.cnbc.com/2015/03/22/lee-kuan-yews-most-memorable-quotes.html
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Rajah, J. (2019). Governing Authoritarian Law: Law as Security. In: Rahim, L.Z., Barr, M.D. (eds) The Limits of Authoritarian Governance in Singapore’s Developmental State. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1556-5_13
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